


Something About You

by greenbucket



Series: gentle storm [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Bisexual Larissa "Lardo" Duan, Drinking, F/F, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2018-12-24 06:17:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12006831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenbucket/pseuds/greenbucket
Summary: The bottom line is Larissa could theoretically approach Camilla and something could happen.





	Something About You

**Author's Note:**

> For Day 5 of OMGCheckPlease! Women Week 2017: Gender/Sexuality Identities

It's not like Larissa has a _real_ crush on Camilla Collins, not like she did on Raj in junior year of high school.

They'd been art buddies since second week of freshman year and he developed some of the worst acne Larissa'd ever seen, like, _for real_ , but she'd still got flustered around him and his hair had been thick enough to lose a hand in. Not that she'd ever done that, or thought about it at length. And he'd been kind about her art when she forgot how to draw limbs or complete a clean block print for like a whole fucking month straight outta nowhere, as well as crazy good at physics which Larissa appreciated because she needed his notes to pass. He'd liked all of her updates on FB; still did, last being an arty pic Claire had taken of Lake Quad and Larissa had deemed worthy. He'd sat with her and her other friends at lunch sometimes and there had probs been some mutual crushing going on in hindsight.

Whatever Larissa's feeling around Camilla is something for sure but it doesn't have the familiarity of Raj. It’s a crush from afar. Larissa feels her face burning whenever Camilla’s near even though they’ve never really spoken, her eyes catching on Camilla’s arms and the curl of her hair and lame ass butterflies erupting in her stomach whenever Camilla laughs. Sure, she also imagines what it'd be like to go over and talk to her and what their first date could be like but it's not the same.

It’s kinda weird for a girl to be attainable, for one thing. Like, Larissa’s had crushes on girls before but their sexuality had always been an unknown, keeping the whole possibility of approaching a distant idea and something she’d played around with but not legit considered. Camilla goes to the same LGBT events that Larissa drops in on and is loud and proud about being bi in a way Larissa feels but doesn’t think she can replicate, busy still thinking too long before she talks; Camilla’s bright and friendly and possible and it draws Larissa in. Larissa thinks her crush is pretty reasonable by all standards, maybe even a rite of passage. Frosh Experience no. 38: Get crush on Camilla Collins.

The bottom line is Larissa could theoretically approach Camilla and something could happen. It’s wild.

She feels over-warm with the potential of it the first half of the semester, stuck between the desire to never do anything with the feeling and the fear that if she doesn’t she’ll regret it. Her art friends give her some shit about it -  _chirp, chirp_ , she thinks, thinking back to Shitty’s hockey guys she’d been introduced to the other day - and it’s chill but it kinda blows a little, how much they push it even when Larissa feels a little fragile about what to do with it. Not that she says anything because that’s not her style but still. Beyond that, nothing really happens until they’re all at a nice but a little try-hard party and Camilla is there, looking for a beer pong partner. 

Larissa knows she’s a fucking pro at beer pong and so do all of her art friends with her (in spite of the intense angsty persona she’s carefully cultivating to project with them). They all turn to look at her when one of the tennis girls lifts Camilla’s arm, advertising her as ‘pretty fucking solid, wrist game off the charts, someone claim this lovely lady and become a legend!’. Next thing she knows she’s marching up to Camilla Collins - _Camilla Collins_ \- and offering to pair up, a couple of ‘get it!’ hoots just audible over the noise. Larissa can feel sweat in a nasty layer all along her back as she speaks and she can see now where Camilla’s smudged her mascara at some point in the night which, to be honest, only makes Larissa more nervous because smudged mascara has never looked more appealing. 

“’Sup, I’m Larissa,” she says. She’s resisting the instinct to stick her hand out.

“Camilla,” says Camilla like Larissa doesn’t already know. “You think we could win this thing together?” She looks Larissa up and down like she’s calculating and its a commitment to competitiveness that Larissa admires.

“Chyeah,” Larissa says, because her heart might be beating a bajillion beats a minute but  _chyeah_.

It seems enough to convince Camilla. She gives a slightly sloppy high five that Larissa just manages to meet and then the game is on.

Despite more than a few drinks between them, they more than hold their own. It’s like they can’t miss the cups put in front of them and the other pair across the table knock over so many that it starts to get ridiculous. Camilla’s arms are tight and toned around Larissa when she pulls her into a hug after a particularly slick manoeuvre and Larissa feels dizzy with it all, floating off her feet like none of it is quite real. It’s probably the alcohol but she can’t ignore how much of it is the anxiety-exhilaration of  _something could really happen here_.  

The alcohol is what Larissa chooses to blame when Camilla drags her to the kitchen for water, laughing and talking fast over the music about how amazing they both were, and Larissa can’t stop staring at the strength in her hands as she does the most mundane of all fucking tasks in getting them two plastic cups of water. The way that with how close they’re standing despite the relative emptiness of the kitchen, Larissa can smell how Camilla’s perfume is mixed with clean sweat and she nearly tips the whole cup down her face she’s so distracted.

The alcohol is definitely what Larissa chooses to blame when she chucks all her usual reserve and caution out the window and leans in to kiss Camilla the second they’ve both put their water down.

Larissa knows she isn’t bad at kissing, she had practice with some guys here and there in high school, but she can only assume Camilla must be some kind of expert because it feels pretty fucking stellar. Warm and a little wet and sending so many signals all over the place Larissa feels like her mind’s blanking out. She can’t believe she’s kissing a girl, that’s it’s something that’s really happening and - she knows it’s stupid, she understands sexuality all right - that it’s ridiculously hot, her heart racing and stomach hot, and she’s really bi, she isn’t imagining it or faking it.

She realises half a second later that she needs to pull back a moment, that the reality that she’s kissing _Camilla Collins_ and she’s a girl and they’re surrounded by people at a party is suddenly way heavy on her shoulders. Larissa thinks she could probably kiss Camilla for a few more hours at least just for the physicality of it (because shouldn’t there be something else? It feels amazing, it's just where’s the fizz of a crush-fantasy made real?) but right now she needs a moment.

The kitchen feels set adift from the party in the aftermath of the kiss. Larissa keeps her eyes on the sticky-looking floor, breathing deep. She can’t look at Camilla quite yet, even as Camilla’s hand is still on the small of her back.

“Larissa...” Camilla starts and Larissa knows that tone of voice. Gentle, cautious, getting Larissa’s back up immediately because she’s not fucking delicate. 

That is, she feels pretty delicate at the moment actually but she doesn’t need Camilla to recognise that. Probs would prefer this entire exchange was just skipped straight over until she felt a lot less delicate, actually.

She looks away from the sticky floor and up at Camilla whose mascara is still smudged and whose eyes are still hazy with alcohol but who also looks concerned and unsure, softly apologetic. It's not anything Larissa ever wanted to see from her.

“Yeah?” she says because not replying would probably just make it worse.

“You seem like an awesome, awesome girl and, like, I’d love for us to be friends or something,” Camilla says, hand still on Larissa’s back and body still so close, “and I’d  _love_  for us to play beer pong again but I don’t know that we should do this. It’s not- I mean- it’s just- you get it, right?”

Larissa doesn’t get it. She has a lot of questions. Why did Camilla kiss her back for so long? Why has Larissa’s crush become suddenly 2D and finite, rather than exploding with the satisfaction of a really great kiss? What’s wrong with _Larissa_ in Camilla’s eyes that even a kiss is too far - is she too shy? Not pretty enough? Too eager? Why did all her friends push them together like this and why did Larissa let herself get pulled along? 

Maybe Camilla can tell Larissa doesn’t know what she’s doing yet, that she’s got an obvious crush that increasingly seems to be probs because, what? Because Camilla is the first girl Larissa’s found attractive that could find her attractive back, the first girl she could look at and think  _that could really happen_  the way she did with Raj? Not even like with Raj, who she knew. With Camilla, who really is hot and would probably be an amazing friend but, now she's staring it in the face, what is Larissa's crush really actually _about_? Larissa hardly knows Camilla enough to have a crush on her. Not the kind of thinking-of-the-future crush her mind had been skirting around lately; they've spoken, like, twice before today.

And, fuck, there's nothing wrong with just liking someone physically but if that's the deal with her and Camilla then why had she pushed so many feelings into it? To make it all more legit, more I'm-not-faking-to-be-hot? Like a girl can't just find another girl hot and then find some other girl hot _and_ want all the romance stuff and have those both be legit? That's bullshit and Larissa knows it is and she just wants to be passed all of this being a baby bi shit already - she thought she already _was_ \- and have all the kinds of experience with girls, none of this shitty confusion. 

And Camilla has had a front row to this mess, been pulled into it unknowingly. This kind of uncertainty isn't something Larissa is ever gonna want anyone to see. She is more embarrassed than she can put into words, feels prickly and awful all over.

“Yeah, I get it,” she says. “No problem.”

They both take a step back, putting the space of the sink between them.

“Well, I guess I should go,” Camilla says after a beat, gesturing back towards the party. “Thanks for the beer pong.”

She looks awkward and still apologetic and she’s still pretty enough Larissa finds it hard to look straight at her without blushing but she’d really prefer if she left. The lingering elation and mixing with humiliation and uncomfortable vulnerability makes for a horrible feeling in her chest that she’d rather be alone with. 

Larissa stays in the kitchen a little longer once Camilla goes. Her hair feels too close and hot around her face, messed a little where Camilla’s hand might have been in it for a second, and she resists the impulsive urge to chop it all off. She ties it back in a painfully tight pony tail and returns to the party.


End file.
